1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method for providing a service, particularly a service for mobile users, for example for vehicles in a vehicle fleet.
2. Description of the Related Art
Cooperative services involve data being collected from many data providers or agents, which may be vehicles, for example, for the purpose of transmission to a service provider, for example a control computer (server) of a back-end system. The service provider evaluates the data and provides information from the service for a service demander or client, for example another vehicle. The information can also be distributed to a plurality of service demanders or clients. The service may be a traffic information service that provides queue information, car park information or other information of interest to a road user along a journey route. The data collected from the data providers for the service provider or the information provided by the service provider for the service demander can be transmitted via an air interface by means of a radio link.
Although the data transmitted by the data providers are not provided with an identification code that is directly associated with a data provider, for example a vehicle, it is entirely possible for correlation with the data provider to be set up by the geographical information that the data contain or by combining a plurality of data from the same data provider. An example of this is continuous data transmission along a journey route beginning at a home address of a driver to the workplace of the driver. A further example of data transmission that allows conclusions about the identity of a data provider, for example a vehicle and hence also the driver, is the recording of data from a vehicle that indicate a high speed of the vehicle and the momentarily later reception of data that indicate the activity of a braking system in the vehicle at a location at which an accident occurs approximately at the same instant. Potential consequences of the capability of drawing conclusions about the identity of a data provider by evaluating the received data may be not just mistrust of the use of information service in users but also legislative measures. These can include firstly the tightening of data protection laws and secondly the risk of demands on data storage.